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PHAËTHON “Wielder of the Steel”
PHAËTHON “Wielder of the Steel”
By Theron Moore
PHAËTHON, the UK old school epic heavy metal act, are set to release their new record “Wielder of the Steel” via Gates of Hell Record August 30 in Europe and September 6 in North America; the band's first full length offering. As the press release states, it’s set to appeal to fans of MANOWAR, MERCYFUL FATE, BATHORY and CIRITH UNGOL. Truthfully, the music on “Wielder of the Steel” has very little in common with most of those acts.
As you can probably deduce, I'm not a fan of PHAËTHON nor this record. Overall, the music is OK but gets bogged down in generic lyrical territory where it becomes contrived and two dimensional. Strikes one and two. My feeling is, “Wielder of the Steel” could've been a solid disc, but it suffered under the weight of a vocalist whose style and delivery I couldn’t connect with. Power metal or epic metal or the "New Wave Of Whatever" deserves epic, high, soaring vocals which wasn’t present here. Without delivering a full thesis, his singing didn’t match the music.
Look, I get it, this genre of metal is all the rage right now, but PHAËTHON is a big hit and miss. It had all the tell-tale markings of a good record but fell way short. I like the music (sans vocals) somewhat, but that’s about as far as I go. This record gets 2/5 stars. I give it a "2" and that’s being generous for the reasons I’ve provided. PHAËTHON rolled a “1” on their roll to hit. Critical miss.
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